As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
In certain implementations, many individual self-contained information handling systems (e.g., server blades) may be placed together in a single chassis or a plurality of chasses. Such implementations allow for a high concentration of computing resources in a relatively small physical space, and are often used in applications that require a significant amount of computing resources (e.g., web servers, file servers, mail servers, etc.).
One disadvantage of high-density computing systems is that such systems often require large amounts of power. Such power requirements may lead to increased operational costs, as well as undesired heating of elements in the high-density computing system that could cause performance degradation. To combat this problem, modern high-density computing systems employ devices (e.g., chassis management controllers) to monitor and/or control power usage. Such power-management devices may permit certain resources to be “throttled” or placed in a low-power mode to allow such power to be allocated to other computing resources in the same chassis or another chassis.
One problem associated with the use of such chassis management controllers occur when the chassis management controller goes offline due to removal, firmware update, failover condition, or other reason, causing the chassis to become unmanaged. When this occurs, the chassis may “assume” that all processing and memory resources are operating at a maximum level, thus causing chassis cooling fans to spin up by default to ensure worst-case scenario cooling requirements. Such spinning up of fans may claim power that may otherwise be used by computing resources (e.g., processors and/or memories) in the same chassis and/or in other chasses. Reclaiming such power may permit more computing resources to be utilized.